The Timepiece and the Girl Who Went Astray: A thrilling new time travel adventure

by O. R. Simmonds

  The two of them ducked out of Main Street, turning left onto Orchard Lane. Will followed Frenz as he peeled off to his right through a narrow passageway. They emerged into a small cobblestone courtyard. The square space was closed in by a number of connected but separate dwellings. Opposite the passageway, directly in front of them was a quaint fisherman’s cottage, with bright white, lime-washed paint. The ground floor had been converted into a storefront. Running across the top of the large front windows was a sign with the words DINGLE HOROLOGICAL WORKSHOP in gold, Times New Roman lettering with a black bevel. Above the sign, perfectly centred with the door below, was a large black and gold clockface. The two ground-floor windows either side of the front door had maroon frames and hand-painted decals on the glass panes. The decals listed the services and clock types available to buy, restore or repair. Longcase clocks, carriage clocks, bracket clocks, wall clocks, pocket and wristwatches. Even barometers. The front door was secured by a sturdy metal shutter, which was currently down.

  The two floors above appeared to be residential.

  Will and Frenz stood in front of the shop and glanced at each other. ‘This it?’ Will asked.

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘What time does she open?’

  Before Frenz could respond, the two of them caught a glimpse of movement behind one of the first-floor windows, the net curtains still fluttering as they looked up. A moment later the shutter door began to move. Its ascent was slow but steady. As soon as the shutter door slid into its housing, the wooden panel door it had been securing swung inwards.

  A woman emerged, elderly but spritely. She had a petite frame, but the way she carried herself indicated surprising strength and athleticism. She had wiry grey hair with darker streaks running through it. She wore it in a tight bun at the top of her head with two wavy strands hanging down, framing her face. She had a surprisingly smooth complexion and were it not for her eyes, which showed wisdom as much as her advancing years, she could have passed for far younger than she was. The fitted, denim dungarees that hung from her shoulders were faded and oil-stained, and the heavy workers’ boots on her feet were scuffed and worn.

  She looked first at Frenz, then at Will, then back to Frenz. A look that could have been resignation flashed across her face before she smiled warmly and said, in lightly accented English, ‘Hello, Frenz. It’s been a while. I supposed you’d better come in. Your friend too.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  May 16th, 1984, 06:12

  They entered a claustrophobic and cluttered shop interior split between two rooms. Almost every patch of wall and every surface was covered with a watch or clock of some description. The three of them rounded the counter at the rear of the store and entered the workshop area down a small set of steps. The workshop continued the jumbled, disorderly theme from the front of the shop. Here, however, the clocks and watches were all in various states of disrepair and the workbenches were covered in faces, arms, levers, pendulums, cogs, wheels and springs. Will couldn’t help but be reminded of the way Frenz’s shop had looked two days prior. Avy Stammers seemed to read Will’s thoughts as he scrutinised the workshop. Without him saying a word she said, ‘As you can see, my workshop is rather chaotic, but believe me, it is organised chaos.’

  Will and Frenz remained silent as they followed Avy out of the workshop and up a narrow spiralling staircase to the first-floor kitchen.

  By the time Will had joined them, Avy was already at the sink, filling the kettle with water, and Frenz was settling into a seat at the breakfast table in the middle of the kitchen. The kitchen was modest and U-shaped. It had traditional Shaker-style pine cabinets and pale green metro-style tiles over the beige and brown speckled kitchen surface. The floor was uneven – momentarily causing Will’s nausea to resurface – and was covered in stained and torn cream linoleum. In the middle of the room was an aluminium-framed table with rounded corners and a ribbed pattern running around the perimeter of the tabletop. It was surrounded by four seats with matching aluminium tube frames and red leatherette fabric with white piping, stretched over well-worn foam padding at the base and back of each seat.

  Avy moved this way and that around the kitchen, preparing cups and a plate of rich tea biscuits. The kettle whined and whistled as it came to the boil and Avy deposited the water into a teapot. After allowing it to brew, she poured an equal amount into the three cups she had lined up on the countertop. With surgical precision, Avy turned smoothly and placed one steaming cup of tea in front of Frenz, who was sitting on the left side of the table, his eyes never looking up from his lap, and set another in front of the empty seat opposite him. She looked up at Will as she did this, inviting him to sit. Will did so silently. Avy turned back to the counter, picked up the third cup for herself and placed a plate of neatly arranged biscuits in the middle of the table. The tension in the room was palpable. She took a biscuit for herself, dipped it in her tea and took a bite from the soft half, leaving a half-moon shape behind. She chewed silently, swallowed, then took a step back and leaned against the kitchen counter. An uncomfortable silence hung in the air before she said, ‘So, who would like to go first? I’m sure we all have questions.’

  Frenz shuffled in his seat and said, ‘Avy, we need your help.’

  ‘I gathered as much. Why don’t you introduce me to your friend?’

  ‘Of course. This is William Wells. He helped me out of a rather tight spot and has proven himself to be trustworthy. He’s not with the agency, he’s an outsider, but he knows enough that we can talk freely. He does have troubles of his own. Problems that I have vowed to help him resolve.’

  ‘What kind of troubles?’

  ‘My fiancée, Abigayle, is missing,’ Will said.

  ‘If what he tells me is true, she has gone astray,’ Frenz added.

  ‘And how exactly did this happen?’

  ‘Will, show her. It’s okay.’

  Will responded by placing his hand on the breakfast table and pulling the sleeve of his jacket upwards, revealing the Timepiece strapped to his wrist.

  Both Frenz and Will spent much of the following hour explaining the events of the past two days. Once Avy was fully up to speed she let out a deep sigh and said, ‘Before I commit to helping you, I have some questions of my own.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do,’ Frenz said.

  ‘Frenz, I haven’t seen you for almost twenty years. Tell me, when was the last time you saw me?’

  ‘Approximately six days ago, I suppose.’

  ‘I know that I pushed you away after Nestor, but I just needed some time to grieve. Before I could even begin to process what had happened to him, you disappeared on me too. What happened to you, Frenz?’

  ‘I’m truly sorry for that, Avy, but I had no choice. Nestor didn’t want you to be involved. He…we were trying to protect you.’

  ‘Frenz, what are you talking about?’

  Frenz took a breath, then said, ‘A few weeks before he disappeared, Nestor came up to my office. He looked pale and unwell; all the blood had drained from his face and he was visibly trembling. I’d never seen him like that before. Avy, you knew him as well as anyone, he was always so optimistic and at ease, so I knew that whatever was going on, it must be serious. He sat down opposite me and told me that he had been visited by someone who wore the Timepiece on their wrist. This person didn’t say where they were from, but Nestor was sure they were from the future. This person told him that the agency could no longer be trusted, that Cillian Gander was about to wrestle control of the agency from the others and that we must relieve the Timekeepers of the Timepiece and keep it from them forever.’

  Will was literally sitting on the edge of his seat as Frenz spoke. Frenz continued, ‘Nestor told me that I had to be the one to steal it. He said that he would do what was necessary so that I could get my hands on the Timepiece and escape with it. Nestor then handed me his Timekeeper’s Guidebook, told me not to open it until I had the Timepiece in my possession and left my office. We
didn’t speak of it again for weeks. Whenever I broached the subject, he refused to talk about it. He closed himself off to me. After a while I just let it go, and things seemed to return to normal. I thought that perhaps he’d been sick or drunk that day he came into my office and that he was ashamed. That’s why I never mentioned it to you, Avy. I thought he would rather you not know how he’d behaved and the things he’d said because, honestly, it sounded crazy.’

  ‘Why didn’t he tell me any of this? I could’ve helped.’

  ‘He wanted to protect you, Avy. We were talking about stealing the Timepiece from the agency, and the less you knew about it the better.’

  Will shuffled back into his seat slightly. ‘Frenz, you told me that Nestor just disappeared in front of you with no warning. Do you think the person who visited Nestor told him that was going to happen?’

  ‘I’m certain of it. I think Nestor knew what would happen, but I don’t think he knew exactly when it would happen until the last few moments. His going astray was key to my being able to steal the Timepiece. And that’s why he had me do it, because he knew he couldn’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Will said. ‘How did Nestor going astray help you steal the Timepiece?’

  Frenz was about to answer when Avy, just now putting the pieces together, responded herself: ‘Because in the event of an agent going astray, the Timepiece is removed from the hands of the Operations Section while an investigation is carried out.’

  Frenz nodded in agreement. ‘Correct. It would have been next to impossible to steal from the Timekeepers themselves, but under an Agent Astray, or AA condition as it was called, the Timepiece is handed over to The Bureau of Game Theory for analysis. They’re more of an administrative wing of the agency and their security is far less substantial. It’s also the section where I worked.’

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Avy said. ‘Are you telling me that Nestor allowed himself to go astray just so you would have an opportunity to steal the Timepiece?’

  Frenz turned to look at Avy and nodded compassionately. ‘It seems that way, yes. I’m so sorry, Avy. I didn’t truly believe what he was saying until after he disappeared. It was only then that I fully understood, and it was too late to talk him out of it.’

  Avy sighed. ‘I don’t blame you, Frenz. Once Nestor set his mind to something, there was no changing it. The two of you were alike in that way. If there’s anyone to blame here, it’s Cillian Gander and his damned Futures Project.’

  ‘Yeah, Frenz told me a little about that,’ Will said. ‘They were using the Timepiece off-book, right?’

  Frenz nodded. ‘No officially sanctioned assignments were planned for the day Nestor disappeared. They would never schedule a repair to a Mimic Watch if there had been. Especially one malfunctioning the way this one was.’

  Avy had a dour look to her and she said, ‘I remember. I was scheduled to repair it, but Nestor insisted that he do it. I blamed myself for years for letting him go in my place.’

  ‘Avy, you cannot blame yourself. It’s usually safe work. A hundred things needed to happen for Nestor to go astray the way he did. I’ve never seen a Mimic Watch locked in its active state like that before.’

  ‘Isn’t there some kind of warning when the Timepiece is activated?’ Will said.

  ‘Yes,’ Avy said. ‘Mimic Watches have a thin ring of light that runs around the perimeter of the watch case. It pulses amber for a few seconds when the Timepiece is activated.’

  ‘So, he had some warning. Couldn’t Nestor have dropped the watch as soon as he saw it glowing amber?’

  ‘Yes, of course he could have, but he had no intention of stopping what was about to happen,’ Frenz said. ‘He was determined to go through with his plan no matter what. From the moment I walked into his workshop, I think he knew what was about to happen. When I spoke to him about joining me after work, it was as if he hadn’t heard me at all. He just looked me in the eye and said, “Faking your death would be the way I’d do it, Frenz. They won’t look for a man if everyone thinks he’s already dead. When I’m gone, would you do something for me? Have a burial service for me. It’ll give Avy a chance to say goodbye. There’s a garden in South Kensington with a series of manmade mounds. I’d like to be buried at the base of one of them. Four feet below the ground should do for an empty casket.” He smiled at me just then, that warm, disarming smile of his, glanced at the Mimic Watch he was holding and then he was gone.’

  Will looked up at Avy as she stared into her half-empty cup. A single tear materialised from her eye but was intercepted by her hand before it had passed her cheekbone. She looked up, instantly composed herself and said, ‘I always wondered why you were so insistent on that service. Especially when you didn’t even attend. Why that specific location? It wasn’t somewhere we’d ever been before, so it had no significance to me.’

  ‘I didn’t fully understand Nestor’s last words at first either, but the man was so brilliant that he’d already planned my escape for me. Well, the basis for an escape plan anyway. Nestor knew that stealing the Timepiece would be far easier than escaping with it.’

  ‘And how did you do that exactly?’ Will asked. ‘Because when I showed up and found you mid-escape, you were in jail. It didn’t exactly look like it was going to plan.’

  ‘On the contrary, it was all going to plan until you showed up. Like Nestor said, you won’t pursue a man if you think he’s dead. So, I followed those sentiments. And not only would I use my own death to cover my tracks, but Nestor’s as well. I arranged an empty casket burial for Nestor. I claimed that we would be burying some of his most prized possessions in place of his body but instead –’

  ‘That was why you weren’t at the service,’ Avy interjected.

  ‘Yes. Well, technically I was there, but obviously nobody knew that I was in the casket, holding the Timepiece in one hand and Nestor’s Timekeeper’s Guidebook in the other. After they buried me, which I have to say is the most terrifying thing I’ve experienced in my life, I opened the book and by torchlight I read my final instructions and a very specific date. There were also instructions for my would-be rescuer to find.’ Frenz glanced at Will as he said this.

  ‘And then we buried you under a manmade mound, just as Nestor suggested,’ Avy added.

  ‘Exactly. The casket was buried at the requested depth of four feet, which was approximately one foot above the ground level before the mound was erected. I then set my destination date and time for September 5th, 1940, as instructed. When I activated the Timepiece, I appeared in a field, one foot above the ground. The landing winded me a little, but it was otherwise safe. It was my first time in the field, literally in this case.’

  ‘I don’t understand, if you went to the past with the Timepiece, wouldn’t the Timekeepers just track you there with it?’ Will asked.

  ‘Indeed. By the time Nestor’s casket was being lowered into the ground, the alarm would have been signalled that the Timepiece was missing and had just been activated. They wouldn’t have had much time to track me because I deactivated the Timepiece less than ten seconds after I arrived in 1940.’

  ‘But I thought you said that deactivating the Timepiece would send you back to your origin timeline.’

  ‘That is also correct, which is why I prepared a dead man’s switch for the Timepiece. As I sat on the ground, I held the Timepiece a little over one foot above the ground, attached the dead man’s switch and let go of it. The switch did its job: the moment I released it, it automatically deactivated the Timepiece, sending it back to 1967, safely buried in an empty casket at the base of a manmade mound in a Kensington garden and leaving me in 1940. And it hadn’t been activated long enough for the Timekeepers to even begin tracking its location. All they would have is a record of a date, but without the Timepiece they had no way of getting there.’

  Will said, ‘So that’s how you had the money that’s still legal tender today. You’re not from 1940 at all, you’re from 1967.’

  Frenz nodded, th
en sipped at his tea.

  ‘But Frenz,’ Avy said, ‘what did you do to end up in jail?’

  ‘I think it was Nestor’s parting gift to me, a practical joke. As it turned out, those manmade mounds were built by the British Army during the Second World War for training purposes. I had let myself go astray in wartime England and I found myself sitting in the middle of an active army base with no explanation of how I got there. I claimed to be lost, but of course I was immediately handed over to the police, arrested and thrown in jail. Getting myself arrested was always part of the plan, but I hadn’t expected it to happen quite like that. Once I was in jail, I planted Nestor’s guidebook in the wall, then complained to a guard about some loose mortar in the wall but was charged with tampering and attempting escape so was moved to the adjacent cell. Then all I had to do was wait. A friend was supposed to arrive and get me out of that jail. A jail that would soon be a target of a Nazi bombing run. So even if remaining Timekeepers in 1967 looked in the history books for me, all they’d find was a prisoner matching my description, who died in his cell after the jail he was in partially collapsed due to bomb damage. It was perfect.’

  Avy took a sip of her tea, pushed herself away from the countertop and set the cup down on the breakfast table. She pulled out an empty chair, sat down with Will and Frenz on either side of her and looked at them both. ‘Frenz, you may never know quite how furious I am with you for keeping me out of this whole thing,’ she said. ‘Fortunately for you I am even more furious with Nestor. The damned fool. My heart was broken when he disappeared, so I know all too clearly what you’re going through, William. If there is anything I can do to reunite you with the woman you love, then I will do it.’

  Will smiled coyly and said, ‘Avy, thank you, really. I do have one question though.’

  ‘Of course, William,’ said Frenz.